Point to Point, Clifton on Dunsmore

Sunday, December 16, 2018

Once again the organisers asked us to provide six vehicles to transport the Doctors and Vets around the course. This event has been held in March or April for years but earlier this year the March event was cancelled due to poor weather conditions.

However, to help boost attendance figures, after lengthy discussions with owners, trainers and riders, the organisers changed the date to December in a trial effort to boost attendance figures. Ourselves and other organisations had little notice of the change and weren’t notified until early November.

Six volunteers were found and arrangements made to meet not far from the event location and travel in together.

Five days before the event we were contacted and informed that the meeting had attracted more competitor entries than expected so the organisers had to split some of the races for safety reasons, and more races meant they had to make a time change to the 1st race starting time. That also meant that any ideas of a Sunday morning ‘lie in’ were completely dashed.

We arrived at the event with plenty of time to set up our ‘area’ and as expected the ground was very soft and parts, specifically adjacent to our parking area, were quite muddy.

Having met the Doctors and Vets and allocated them vehicles, the first of seven races started on time and went without incident. In fact the whole event ran surprisingly well given the soft conditions and increased entries. There were nevertheless a couple of incidents with fallen riders that necessitated medical attention followed by an unplanned trip to hospital for both though their injuries were thought not to be too serious. The Vets also had little to do with just one or two very minor injuries requiring a stitch or two.

No towing duties after the racing finished (3 4WD tractors had been provided by the farming community), an enjoyable dry day with our team making good use of the Officials refreshment tent and looking forward to the next event.